Numerical computation of crack growth of Low Cycle Fatigue in the 304L austenitic stainless steel

• We study the crack behavior of 304L stainless steel under large scale yielding.
• We validate a law behavior that simulates the cyclic response of a 304L under isothermal and anisothermal conditions.
• Crack propagation is achieved with node release technique and followed by the evaluation of energy criterion.
• The kinetic of propagation in anisothermal loading is different from that obtained at isothermal loading.

This work aims to study the crack behavior of 304L under large scale yielding. An elasto-viscoplastic Chaboche model with a nonlinear kinematic hardening has been chosen. The identification of the law parameters was performed by using an experimental databases issue from uniaxial tests. In addition, the chosen model is validated with TMF tests. Then, a 2D FEA of a tubular specimen is performed with ABAQUS® in order to study the crack growth by using the node release technique. This crack growth rate is estimated by using an energy criteria based on the calculation of the J-integral at different crack lengths.